Open home churn | Retrotastic | First home in my 50s

If this email is not displayed correctly, [click here]( to view an online version. Hi {NAME} Ethan Brown and Kate Lambert are an engaged Christchurch couple who bought their first home together — a three-bedroom 1960s bungalow — [at auction last week for $459,000](. The pair, who work as a painter and a McDonald’s manager, are good savers and put away about $30,000 each towards the deposit by living to a tight weekly budget. But they couldn’t have done it without the generosity of their parents, who let them pay board to live at home rather than rent. Ethan’s parents also sold a property to him and his brother four years ago, so that they could flip it for a tidy profit to put towards a home each. Good on them. But to me, this is veritable proof of a well and truly broken housing market. Financial savvy and a few sacrifices simply aren’t enough to get in the door these days — not even in the greener grass of the Garden City, where supply isn’t as much of an issue as it is elsewhere in the country. Just this week we learned that [home ownership has hit its lowest level in almost 70 years](... So can we finally stop telling people to just be better savers, and [start looking at the bigger picture]( Mikaela Wilkes Homed reporter Enjoying this email? [Check out Stuff's other daily and weekly newsletters](. [Pinterest]( Did a friend forward this to you? [Sign up to get Stuff Homed in your inbox]( [Unsubscribe]( [Newsletter Settings]( [Privacy Policy]( [Advertise]( [Feedback](